BO On Bike

Ah yes, remember the days when a dorky picture of W would be plastered all over? Wonder how far and wide this gem will get to go? Maybe the worship has finally slipped a bit, this seems like a gem.

Remember Europe?

Op-Ed Columnist - The Parent Model - NYTimes.com

Back when W was President, any contrary opinion from Europe was automatically worthy of a lot of study -- and to pay a lot of attention to it was "arrogant". Naturally, with the advent of BO, the MSM is now of a completely different mind -- when Europe has a different opinion from BO, they must be wrong, as is everyone else that disagrees with the brilliant failed community organizer.

Now, we have some emerging results. Germany spends 1.5% of GDP, trims labor costs, increases employment flexibility and enjoys a 9% GDP growth. We spent 6% of GDP, give a bunch of kickbacks to unions/threaten future unionization ("Card Check"), pass a bunch of new laws to make employing people more expensive and restrictive and the result is 1.6% growth.

Is this absolute proof that Germany is completely right and we are completely wrong? **NO!! ... it is INFORMATION, just like when Europe would have some anti-Bush thing to say. We get smarter by looking at data and results, we get stupider when we let ideology be our ONLY guide ... which is the left-primary view.

Oikophobia

Oikophobia - WSJ.com

The Ground Zero mosque is an affront to the sensibilities of ordinary Americans. "The center's association with 9/11 is intentional and its location is no geographic coincidence," as theAssociated Press has reported. That Americans would find this offensive is a matter of simple common sense. The liberal elites cannot comprehend common sense, and, incredibly, they think that's a virtue. After all, common sense is so common.

The British philosopher Roger Scruton has coined a term to describe this attitude: oikophobia. Xenophobia is fear of the alien; oikophobia is fear of the familiar: "the disposition, in any conflict, to side with 'them' against 'us', and the felt need to denigrate the customs, culture and institutions that are identifiably 'ours.' " What a perfect description of the pro-mosque left.

By jove, I think he has got it! It takes no other sense than "common sense" to identify a Victory Mosque opening on 9/11/11 as an abomination, and common sense is the the sort that Oiks oppose most vehemently!

Yet the oiks' vision of themselves as an intellectual aristocracy violates the first American principle ever articulated: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal . . ."

This cannot be reconciled with the elitist notion that most men are economically insecure bitter clinging intolerant bigots who need to be governed by an educated elite. Marxism Lite is not only false; it is, according to the American creed, self-evidently false. That is why the liberal elite finds Americans revolting.

Ok, I'm SURE that he has it! This is EXACTLY what we have going on, and BO is the "Uber-Oik"!

Telling Us How to Think

CNN Compares Ground Zero Protestors to Nazi Sympathizers | NewsBusters.org

Any questions how we ought to think about protesting the mosque if you are a "CNN believer"?

See any mild difference in CNN treatment of Muslims, compared to say "the Religious Right"??

 Remember, the positions of the farthest out of the "Religious Right" on gays, treatment of women, freedom of expression, etc are LIBERAL in comparison to even "moderate" Muslims. The only significant reason that I can see for supporting Muslims over the imaginary "Religious Right"  is that the percentage of Muslims that hate America is WAY higher. I'm still waiting for the left to come up with another reason --- "you are a racist if you don't support it" is name calling, not a reason.

Live Free or Die

Obama Misreads Message of ‘Live Free or Die’: Amity Shlaes - Bloomberg

The founders wanted states to be the "labratories" that allowed Americans to test various government policies to see what worked, and to allow people to choose between different approaches, yet remain American. Shales does a good comparison between Maine and New Hampshire (thus the "Live Free or Die" ... state motto). As should surprise nobody, larger government loses.

This jury has been in forever, the only problem is that peoples memories are too short, and they confuse best available and unattainable perfection as goals. Free market policies are more successful, they are not perfect (humans are still involved). Recessions and potentially even depressions will happen, but there is nothing that can't be made worse (or less good) by the intervention of the government! As in the '30s, government can always make the pain deeper and longer lasting.

Just look at the current TX economy relative to CA or NY. The world had the best laboratory case that one could ever see with East and West Germany for 50 years + of the difference between more free and less free -- same people, different government, vastly inferior result on the more government side.

Greed is a deadly sin, but so is envy. Humans are very prone to both, but capitalism harnesses greed to grow the economic pie for all (imperfectly). Socialism harnesses envy to get supporters, but it only "produces" increasingly angry people fighting over an ever shrinking economic pie.

RealClearPolitics - No Compromise on Mosque

RealClearPolitics - No Compromise on Mosque

This is not a complicated matter. If you believe that an entire religion of upward of a billion followers attacked the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, then it is understandable that locating a mosque near the fallen World Trade Center might be upsetting. But the facts are otherwise. Islam was not in on the attack -- just a sliver of believers. That being the case, those people with legitimate hurt feelings are mistaken. They need our understanding, not our indulgence.

See, it is simple. It has to be THE WHOLE religion before anyone MIGHT be "upset". Of course, the complete intolerance of Islam, a religion that demands the church and state be one, is not a consideration. Let's see, was it THE WHOLE "religious right" that "wanted to look in bedroom windows" just a little while ago?


The left wing of this country that can't stand even a Christian movie (remember "The Passion"?) is just brimming with "tolerance" for a religion in which wives can be beaten, gays are to be stoned, and ALL nations are to be united under Sharia law! How ought be "get along" on this?  The left has their typical answer; NO COMPROMISE! It is the "moral left" against the "bigots, demagogues and uninformed".

Appearing on ABC's "This Week with Christiane Amanpour," Daisy Khan, a founder of the mosque (and the wife of the imam), rejected any compromise. She was right to do so because to compromise is to accede, even a bit, to the arguments of bigots, demagogues or the merely uninformed. This is no longer her fight. The fight is now all of ours.

Reality Is

As economy slows and Fed voices conflict, markets look to Bernanke for guidance

The major power in the US Government is in the Congress. The Democrats took over in '06, we are now in our 4th year of Democrat rule and over 2 years into recession. Reality 1.

Wishful thinking is not a policy. Government is FAR more limited than what the left likes to believe relative to the economy. If it were not so, then the USSR would have been a huge success, and Japan and the European economies would have done vastly better than the US. They did not and are not -- but since we have made a hard turn toward emulating their approaches, we are seeing the same results -- only worse. We are much larger, so their bad policies are mega-bad when applied to the US.

The idea that "the economy always cycles and this is just a cycle" is based on way too short a sample set. BO and the Democrats talked the economy down as hard as they could in '08 in order to add to their election victories. The word "depression" was quite common leading up to the election. Their assumption --- and most people's assumption, was that the economy was going to bounce back quickly and that the stimulus was just a little extra insurance --- that is why they used most of the stimulus to transfer to states, largely to pay off government and teachers unions for supporting their election. They figured the economy would go up "like it always does" and they would claim credit.

Democrats yelled about deficits that were tiny relative to GDP -- and they always talked about those deficits "crowding out" loans to small business and consumers in the midst of a growing world wide economy. Now they are running multi-trillion dollar deficits in a global recession, and they have forgotten all about "crowding out". Democrats have no sense of perspective. I would have much rather seen smaller or non-existent deficits under Republican administrations, but those deficits were MUCH smaller, AND other than '82, they were in much better economic times. A few drinks are fine, not "perfect", but fine -- the Democrats are drinking a 5th of debt whiskey for breakfast, that is a problem!

At some point, people are going to have to start believing in THEMSELVES again! First, we have got to get a WHOLE bunch of government off our backs! 

Economy Stalled

GDP report - latimes.com

As we ought to have learned in the 30's, 60's, from Japan, from Europe, or from many other sources, capitalism is an imperfect system, but vastly better than the alternatives. Dem-O-nomics -- rob from the rich, the future and the productive, and give to the poor, the political cronies and the non-productive, DOESN'T WORK!!!!

That Old Ad Hominem Refuge

Charles Krauthammer - The last refuge of a liberal

If you can't figure out any way to beat your opponent on substance, call them names. The essence of liberal argument. Another great one by Charles.

Reviving Us-Versus-Them Politics - Newsweek

Reviving Us-Versus-Them Politics - Newsweek

Remember that point after the 2K election when Democrats said "the court has spoken, let's all come together behind our new president as Americans"? Or after we were attacked on 9-11 and Democrats said "we are all American's, let's come together and support President Bush as he goes after the Axis of Evil"? Remember that?

Well, Elanor must, because this idea of "us vs them" is a new idea that Republicans are just reviving now!

During the 2008 presidential primaries, 7 percent of those polled in Texas, Florida, and Ohio thought Obama was a Muslim and 40 percent didn’t know what his religion was, “a near majority guilty of gross ignorance.”

uh, so what does he mean by "Obama's religion"? I think everyone knew Kennedy's religion -- Catholic. I'm thinking that W was a Methodist, but I'd be completely unsurprised to find that 40% (or more) didn't know that that (or that I might be wrong). AFAIK, BO attends no church at all at this point -- so what is the right answer? Unchurched?

7%??? I believe that you could get a poll that had 7% believing anything ... including that both they and BO were space aliens. What does THAT have to do with anything??

Understanding Analogy

Charles Krauthammer - Moral myopia at Ground Zero

Charles scores a 2nd good column on the Mosque issue, but I think the discussion of the different views of analogy and symbolism are the important part.

I'd proffer two items that based on many books and articles I believe to be as close as we currently get to scientific understanding of human thought:

1). We ONLY learn via analogy -- there is no "built in human brain instruction set", or "engrams", "collective unconscious", or other techie or murky spirituo-psycho building blocks of thought. It is all neurons, and the only "there, there" is the sucking and startle reflexes. It is a vast web of neural relationship.

2). Every analogy is imperfect -- as is every model of the universe. There are many that map quite precisely, but then one gets to the quantum level and finds even those are less precise then we had hoped. We are often confused because our MODELS (maps) can be VERY precise ... but alas, they are not the territory.

So for me, the operative paragraph is this:

Where the president flagged, however, the liberal intelligentsia stepped in with gusto, penning dozens of pro-mosque articles characterized by a frenzied unanimity, little resort to argument and a singular difficulty dealing with analogies.

Since we understand by analogy, when there is a conflict on an issue, it is almost always a conflict of analogies. For some reason, that comes out especially clearly on the Mosque issue.

My belief is that is because liberals see Islam as essentially the replacement for communism in their "enemy of my enemy is my friend" model. The USSR used to be the most potent anti-American power, so liberals were USSR apologists. Now, Islam is the most potent attacker, so they have moved their apologetics to that front.


We know they are not huge "religious supporters" -- see constant battles on any sort of visibility of Christianity; 10 commandments, prayer anywhere public, Christmas trees and manger scenes, etc. 


We also know they are not "minority religion supporters"  in any general way ... see treatment of Mormon sects -- which BTW have many of the same problems as Muslims relative to multiple / very young "wives". 

Gonzo: The Life of Hunter S. Thompson

By Jann Wenner and Corley Seymour.

This book is largely made up of anecdotes by a broad set of people that were in Hunter's circle to varying degrees over his life. Lots of reading and lots of detail not really required to draw what seem like the very clear conclusions -- the book lets to draw your own in general, which I appreciated. A summary:

• Hunter was a lifetime alcoholic and drug addict. Pot, coke, LSD, uppers, downers ... basically everything. Typical breakfast was a bunch of normal food, plus 6 Heineken and the better part of a 5th of gin. During the day it was constant beer and Chivas with a lot of alcohol diversity mixed in with an equal opportunity smorgasbord of drugs. 
• He was at some level, a "genius" in that "Hells Angles", "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" as books and a number of other columns from Rolling Stone are considered required reading, at least in the American left-wing canon. 
• He was wired heavily into the American media left -- Rolling Stone, Saturday Night Live stars (Akroyd, Belushi, Murray), Don Johnson, Jack Nicholson, Johnny Depp, Jimmy Buffett, Sean Penn,  and many more.
• The American media left and the political left are one in the same. The book contains comments on Hunter by McGovern, Carter, Gary Hart, John Kerry, James Carvelle (major Clinton operative), Pat Caddell (Democrat Pollster), Jack Germond (used to be on PBS panel show), Ed Bradley (CBS, 60min) and a number of others.

My major reactions to the book are really twofold. If one removes religion and the concept of an afterlife with some sort of judgement and "significantly bigger picture" from life, then Hunter's lifestyle of being drunk and stoned with a parade of early 20's women in his life is probably "the male optimum". As James Carville put it:

"And Hunter did something that none of us had the guts to do --- he led the kind of life that secretly all of us would like to have and had the guts to lead. To hell with the whole thing, just stay drunk and high and smoke and hang out and write outrageous things. He's never lived his life on anybody else's terms."

There is a nice picture in the book of the Rolling Stone political "Brain Trust", including Hunter, sitting around a table with Carville and Bill Clinton. We know that Bill Clinton lived as much of that life as he could get away with, as did Obama (he is VERY clear about that in his first book, in case you think I'm being unfair). 

Hunter essentially lived "the Democrat American Dream" -- drunk, stoned, a string of young women, complete irresponsibility and absolute and complete disdain for "anything Republican" ... Nixon, Reagan, Bush, religion, sobriety, responsibility, laws, values, etc.

The other major observation is how open the connections with the Democrats and media outlets that supposedly cover them as "journalists" really are. 

The idea that "Fox is biased" drives the left nuts. Meanwhile, the whole Hollywood, MSM, Democrat establishment have this completely incestuous, yet actually "open" if somebody just reads a few books or reads a few articles in their own mouthpieces. The general Democrat-Media nexus is sort of this totally open "wink-wink, nod-nod" collective. We know that Clinton LOVED to go to Hollywood and hang out with his pals, that lists and meetings of "how to get people on board with what Democrat X is doing" are common place. This book covers a couple such conclaves where the Rolling Stone was only one of the players -- NYT, NBC, CBS were also involved -- "getting the message across" was simply "the right thing to do".

In the Democrat mind, their "care for the little guy" is more than the equivalent of Christ dying on the cross for a Christian. Their moral superiority is so pervasive that it completely justifies virtually any act in their minds. The Democrats feel that "their care for the disadvantaged" and through their willingness to get "somebody else to pay" for the cost of that "caring" has completely absolved them from all past and future "sin". Christianity assumes "spiritual fruit" -- it assumes that redemption creates a response, a change that isn't grudging, but genuine. Democrat faith is faith that creates certainty (and supposedly happiness), while relying on the actions of others ("the rich") as it's agents, with it's "benefits" bestowed on others (the "poor").

While snorting enough coke, smoking enough pot, and drinking enough expensive booze to lift at least 100s if not thousands from poverty, Hunter always "cared for the little guy" -- and Hunter could tell that Nixon and Reagan didn't, so that made them 100% evil, and Hunter 100% good. A moral universe devoid of gray.

The fact that he lived 67 years, never drying out or going straight is a testimony to superhuman organ strength. I suppose I'll get to reading Hells Angles and "Vegas" at some point -- if only to improve my understanding of the liberal mind by another meager notch.

Very hard to recommend the book ... skim for names that you find to be interesting would be my recommendation if so inclined.

Victory in Iraq - WSJ.com

Victory in Iraq - WSJ.com

"Success as a thousand fathers, failure is an orphan" (JFK)

What ever happened to the wisdom of that phrase? In Iraq, the US MSM and Democrats declared "Failure" loudly and often -- because they were certain they could stick Bush with fatherhood.

Now that Victory is the result, the response is very muted. (silent?)

Some will say, "oh, but the cost was too high". It was too high in WWI, WWII, Korea and every other war ever fought as well. Cost is what it is. The difficult, the worthy, the risky -- they never come cheap. The easy, the meaningless, the "gimme" -- they often seem cheap for a season, but their expense turns out to be even greater than a difficult, worthy risk that ends in loss. Some things are worth dying for, some things aren't worth spit.

We live in the statist house of mirrors where even victory can have no father, since the very concepts of "success" or "victory", except as expressions of raw political power, have been repealed. To be successful is to be suspect -- failure is the positive coin of the realm. It draws the support of the state.

Thank you George W Bush, and thank you to all the troops that fought the good fight! There are still those of us who celebrate victory, and we will taste it again.

How Low Can He Go?

The stunning decline of Barack Obama: 10 key reasons why the Obama presidency is in meltdown – Telegraph Blogs

One has to go overseas to hear the details of BO's negative poll numbers. Time was when every teeny slide down for W was front page news in every US MSM outlet. My how times have changed. Remember when the world was CERTAIN to just LOVE the scent of BO?

My title for this is just trying to help the MSM find the kind of headline that they would have been using had these numbers been for W vs BO!!

Against this backdrop, the president’s approval ratings have been sliding dramatically all summer, with the latest Rasmussen Daily Presidential Tracking Poll of US voters dropping to minus 22 points, the lowest point so far for Barack Obama since taking office. While just 24 per cent of American voters strongly approve of the president’s job performance, almost twice that number, 46 per cent, strongly disapprove. According to Rasmussen, 65 per cent of voters believe the United States is going down the wrong track, including 70 per cent of independents.

Being President Is Hard, Who Knew?

Washington, We Have a Problem | Politics | Vanity Fair

Oh the horror of the difficulty of being President. It was SO EASY just 10 years ago that even the village idiot, Bush, could do it. Now? The Federal Government has gotten so big an unwieldy, and those NASTY Republicans in the minority -- they just aren't docile and concerned about "the bigger issues" like the Democrats were back when Bush was elected. There is the internet, lobbyists, disasters, fund raising -- it is enough to make your head spin. WAY different from what it was for Bush, and so so much more difficult! If only poor BO had known!

Remember how the the whole media cheered for Bush to succeed after the drawn out election of '00? Neither do I ... but apparently Vanity Fair just discovered that it is a really tough job when some of media is against you. They must mean Fox, because clearly they will carry water for BO no matter how clear it becomes that failing at being a Community Organizer was a pretty darned good indicator how he would fail as President!

Perhaps BO and company ought to just bag it and go on vacation? Oh, they already did? Never mind.